The present divorce law in New York State is unethical and should be changed, asserted Rabbi Sidney E. Goldstein, associate rabbi of the Free Synagogue, New York City, and chairman of the social justice commission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, when he spoke today at a hearing on proposed amendments to the divorce law before the codes committee of the New York State Assembly.
“Because it results in collusion on the part of those who would be free, because it forces others to live together in a painful and unnatural union, because it leads to immoral and illegal associations between men and women, because it breeds disrespect and irreverence for law itself, the divorce law of the State of New York stands indicted as an unethical statute,” Rabbi Goldstein declared. “For no law can be ethical unless it coincides with the right and eventuates in absolute justice for those it is designed to punish or protect.”
Dr. Goldstein spoke of the plight of couples who find themselves unsuited to each other, and declared that infidelity is not the most important source of domestic trouble. he quoted statistics revealing that divorce is granted for infidelity in only 11.5 per cent of all the cases in the United States as a whole. Desertion, cruelty and drunkenness are common causes for divorce action.
THE NEW PROPOSALS
The hearing was held under the chairmanship of Assemblyman I Arnold Ross. The divorce law changes under discussion are those making three years’ desertion grounds for divorce, and strengthening the law against perjury and collusion.
“In this community there are many couples who find themselves utterly unsuited for each other and who cannot or will not, because of conscience, escape through the one door that the law allows,” Rabbi Goldstein said. “Let me ask you to picture to yourself what this forced association must mean to a man and woman who have no affection for each other, who become a source of irritation to each other and who have come to regard each other with distaste if not with hate. This legal but detested, and one might say almost immoral, intimacy is a source of irresponsible misery and torture to any woman and it means little less to the man.”
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